The Most Famous Writer Who Ever Lived
A True Story of My Family
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
The Washington Post Book Club's October Pick
One of Washington Independent Review of Book's Favorite Books of 2016
“A grandson of writer MacKinlay Kantor unravels the tangles of his grandfather's life and finds many of those same threads (the good, the bad, the ugly) in his own…A compelling account, suffused with both sympathy and sharpness, of a writer who's mostly forgotten and of a grandson who's grateful.”—Kirkus Reviews
An award-winning veteran of The Washington Post and The Miami Herald, Tom Shroder has made a career of investigative journalism and human-interest stories, from those of children who claim to have memories of past lives, in his book Old Souls, to that of a former Marine suffering from debilitating PTSD and his doctor pioneering a successful psychedelic drug treatment in Acid Test. Shroder’s most fascinating subject, however, comes from within his own family: his grandfather MacKinlay Kantor was the world-famous author of Andersonville, the seminal novel about the Civil War. As a child, Shroder was in awe of his grandfather’s larger-than-life character. Kantor’s friends included Ernest Hemingway, Carl Sandburg, Gregory Peck, and James Cagney. He was an early mentor to the novelist John D. MacDonald and is credited with discovering the singer Burl Ives. Kantor wrote the novel Glory for Me, which became the multi-Oscar-winning film The Best Years of Our Lives. He ghostwrote General Curtis LeMay’s memoirs, penning the infamous words “We’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age,” referring to North Vietnam. Kantor also suffered from alcoholism, an outsize ego, and an abusive and publicly embarrassing personality where his family was concerned; he blew through several small fortunes in his lifetime, and died nearly destitute. In The Most Famous Writer Who Ever Lived, Shroder revisits the past—Kantor’s upbringing, his early life, his career trajectory— and writes not just the life story of one man but a meditation on fame, family secrets and legacies, and what is remembered after we are gone.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The urge to investigate one's origins is on powerful display in Shroder's (Acid Test) exploration of his famous grandfather, Pulitzer Prize winning author MacKinlay "Mack" Kantor. Mack was born in Iowa in 1904 and grew up in poverty, and he decided early on to become a writer. He is perhaps best known today for Andersonville, his bestselling, epic 1955 novel about the notorious Civil War prison, and for writing the novel on which the Academy Award winning 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives is based. Despite his successes however, Mack's popularity had waned by the 1970s, with his decline marked by alcoholism, diminished income, and a shift to far-right politics. Shroder draws on family letters, photos, and stories; his own memory; and Mack's papers at the Library of Congress, in the process realizing how little he really knew his complicated grandfather. He also learns the stories of Mack's hardworking, smart, and loving mother, and his charming, large-living, manipulative con man of a father. The book is more than a biographical excavation; it's a journey of understanding. Shroder's visceral reactions and moving discoveries as he comes to terms with his grandfather's life make for a trip well worth taking.
